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We love you, but sometimes we feel like you don’t get us. We’re builders, explorers, inventors. We love making awesome things and sharing them with the world. We love seeing the future and making it real for others to experience.

We love creating the impossible.

We love wowing people with that magical moment when what we build exactly meets their needs. That moment when dreams come true. We don’t mind working hard, putting in long hours, trying and failing and trying again, because we crave the reward of seeing our ideas come to life and benefitting lots of people.

We love talking and working with others who share our pleasure.

We don’t mind helping adults learn how to use their iPhones, getting the projector working, or making a beautiful website–it’s just that we can do so much more.

We’re just like everybody else. We want to connect our faith with our passion. We want to use our gifts to advance the gospel, to advance the Kingdom of God. We want to do what we love for a cause that matters.

It’s hard to find this in the secular workplace and it’s really hard to do this alone.

Can the Church be the place? Can it be the place where we develop our technical gifts? Can it give us the opportunities to cast a vision, experiment, try and fail and try again to build things for the Gospel? Can it bring together the community we crave?

Will the Church help us to help her?

We love you Church, that’s why we want to give you the best we have to offer: our creativity, our skill, our inventiveness, our focus, our drive, our curiosity.

We want the Church to lead the change curve, to out-create, out-invent, out-innovate the world, contributing to the state of the art for the sake of the Gospel. We want to contribute our unique gifts to creating amazing foretastes of God’s Kingdom for others to enjoy.

Dear Church, will you help us do this–for the glory of Christ and the salvation of the nations?

You can read my thoughts as a participant of a previous hackathon here. This is briefly what I learned as an organizer.

Lesson #1 – Social time is not a waste of time

Despite my past distaste for undirected socializing, I discovered that the act of convening itself satisfies people’s real need for company, other goals aside. Each participant had different reasons for coming, but we shared a common desire to exercise our skills, to not be isolated, to get to know each other, and to help one another.

By the end, some people grew in technical prowess, others got a solution for their problem, some were reinvigorated by the energy of their peers, while others gained new friendships. The value delivered to each person could not have been meticulously planned ahead of time, but it could only be realized by convening. As an introvert, I was reminded that good things happen when you simply show up.

Lesson #2 – Affirmation energizes everybody

The excellent book Practicing Affirmation by Sam Crabtree (affiliate link) convinced me that praising people for the ways they reflect God’s character is an essential element of Christian community. Affirmation brings a breath of fresh air to relationships and energizes people to continue doing good. Chris Armas, the primary organizer of Code for the Kingdom, is the first person I’ve encountered who consistently practiced it. His ability to bring together a team of volunteers and motivate them around a common cause was amazing and his method was simple:

On every weekly call, he would genuinely ask “how are you?” and sincerely end with, “how can I serve you?” Throughout the preparation and duration of the event Chris would notice even the smallest positive contributions and affirm them without ignoring the work still to be done. This is admittedly an oversimplification of all the behind the scenes work he had to do, but the affirmation was contagious. I started imitating him and took great pleasure in refreshing others, resulting in a virtuous cycle of mutual refreshment. “A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” (Proverbs 11:25).

Exercise: Try affirming Godly behaviors that you notice in other people 5 times today.

Lesson #3 – Generosity breeds generosity

Code for the Kingdom was free for all attendees (registration was refunded if you showed up). This was made possible by the sponsors, the two largest being Leadership Network and Faith Comes by Hearing. Their generosity created an atmosphere of a bias for action and a freedom to experiment (I wouldn’t be able to put on an event like this myself for fear of wiping out my savings in one go :-)). At the same time I learned that generosity is not opposed to frugality–on a Costco run, we would still locally optimize how much we spent on snacks and drinks, etc.

People were generous not only financially, but also with their time and labor. Shannon Thompson meticulously served as the event coordinator and made several runs with Chris to Costco and Walmart to ensure the rabid developers were well provisioned for their red-eye programming. Shamichael Hallman captured every important moment to ensure we had great coverage of the event and Blake Burris confidently guided the group as the master of ceremony. There were many more volunteers, some of whom had come from out of town to be there.

Can you imagine what it was like to be in a room filled with such generosity and service? It made me not want to miss out on the joy of giving. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35b)

Next Steps

Want to bring Code for the Kingdom to your area? Get in touch with one of us here.

Want to join a community of generous people using their technical, design, and entrepreneurial gifts to advance the gospel? Sign up at here to stay connected.

Captain’s Log, March 12, 2014 AD

After a challenging 5 months, the motivational actuators are back online and we are resuming progress on our voyage. To my surprise, the most difficult part of the adventure so far has been maintaining focus and motive power. It would have been preferable to journey with a fleet rather than a lone ship, but such is the nature of a pathfinding mission. There was also a month of infection, which damaged our starboard auditory communications capabilities. We were immobile for weeks.

The E.M.O. shields have been battered for months in no small part due to bipolar fluctuations, resulting in several power failures within the ship, but thankfully many of the storms have subsided and we now have time to recover. In the meantime we invested in “capability enhancements” that may prove useful in the future.

We were recently put in touch with a fleet that was en route to strengthen an alliance with an advanced tech division and they invited us to come along. We discovered some synergies between our missions, but the details need to be worked out and we have asked central command for further instructions.

====== END LOG ENTRY ======

In the previous post in this series, I briefly shared the TheoTech vision. These are some of the struggles I’ve encountered in pursuit of it.

Struggle #1: Looking back

Feeling like I had little to show for the past months, I couldn’t help questioning myself. Did I make a mistake? No finished product, no customers, no investors, no co-founders. Competition seemingly leagues ahead with an accelerating pace to boot. Several people wanted to recruit me for their work–I wrestled with the allure of progress, ample pay and working with a great team–but having entered this work because of God’s call, it would also take his call to send me elsewhere.

Whenever an interesting opportunity or major setback arose, I remembered these words:

Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:61-62)

While some people complimented my guts for leaving a stable job to pursue an uncertain vision, I don’t feel gutsy. There are days when I simply cry out to God admitting that I am unfit for his kingdom and feel like turning back and giving up. On other days I distract myself with short term pleasures so I don’t have to think about it.

Struggle #2: Waiting

I had hoped by this point to have found a disciplined rhythm, served many major happy customers, met a co-founder to labor with or a sage-mentor to teach me or a kingdom investor to fund me. Instead I find myself wavering between depending on God and wanting so badly to have the help of others and then feeling confused over how the two are appropriately compatible (the merit and grace tension).

The truth is that I’m still waiting on the Lord for a breakthrough.

On the one hand, I think there is so much more I could do, which paralyzes me with self-defeating guilt over not doing enough. On the other hand, I believe that if God wants the vision to happen, he must be the one to bring it about, which paralyzes me with resignation over the apparent lack of divine aid. I accept that things take time, but “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12a).

Struggle #3: Going solo

Being alone, in particular, has proven far harder than I ever imagined. Ideas that should be inspiring become overwhelming when they completely fall on the shoulders of one person. Even simple tasks are hard to push to completion without the moral support and assistance of others. Time spent on one task is time taken away from others–and context switching dissipates any momentum in a direction.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!”

Many people counseled me to wait until I had a team, but believing that I had been called in that season led me to jump anyway, asking God to provide co-laborers and trusting he would provide. While I have been blessed by a supportive community, I still feel the need for people doing the work with me.

Fighting for Faith

In spite of these struggles–the temptation to turn back, to impatiently strive for success, and the craving for company–I must give thanks for what has happened since November. By God’s grace I:

Unfortunately, when I contemplate these things, I also find myself anticipating disappointment instead of being hopeful. How treacherous! Why is God’s grace towards me producing anxiety instead of thanksgiving?

After reading Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin’s Path to God (affiliate link), I realized that each struggle was simply a lack of trust. The very thing God wants, I withhold–not so much my money, time, labor, or sacrifice, but simply my trust. I want to merit success, to have confidence that I am good enough and deserve to make it, with the progress to prove it. God wants me trust that he is good enough, that his grace will ensure that I make it even though I don’t deserve it, with the Spirit to prove it.

This very act of writing is a fight to believe:

That in my loneliness, God is with me. “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, see context for conditions)

That in my waiting, God will keep his word. “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” (Joshua 21:45)

That in my persevering, God guarantees a great reward. “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

Conclusion

So can we create Earth’s most God-centered company? A place where righteousness, justice and steadfast love dwell? A place where truth and peace prevail over politics and people compete to show kindness? Can we foster a culture where people flourish in their gifts and where success aligns with the things God cares about most–loving Him and one another? Can we innovate on behalf of the gospel? Can we hasten the return of the King by cultivating the fruit of his Kingdom to the ends of the earth?

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20b)

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. (Hebrews 11:1)